By C.R. Edgerton 



Nine million bricks. 



Tons and tons of shifting sand. 



And a hole big enough to hold a 

 small ship. 



That's what Fort Macon meant 

 to the slaves and day laborers who 

 built it in the early decades of the last 

 century. 



Today, 157 years later, Fort 

 Macon is North Carolina's most 

 visited state park. 



If you think the 

 beautiful beaches 

 that kiss the lips of 

 this old fort are the 

 real drawing card 

 of Fort Macon 

 State Park, think 

 again. 



"Our coastal 

 parks are by far the 

 most visited," says 

 Margaret Hassell 

 of the N.C. Divi- 

 sion of Parks and 

 Recreation. "But in 

 this case, the fort 

 itself is the drawing 

 card. It's unique to 

 that part of the 

 state." 



Hassell says 

 almost 1.4 million 

 people strolled into 

 Fort Macon State 

 Park in 1992. And 

 few of those 

 beachgoers left 

 without taking at 

 least a peek at the brick structure 

 lying just a few hundred yards from 

 the sand and surf. 



An overriding sense of shared 

 history lures people of both Northern 

 and Southern persuasion from the 

 scrunchy sand of the park's wide 

 beaches into the grass and brick 

 pentagon that make up Fort Macon 

 proper. 



On its way to becoming one of 

 North Carolina's most popular tour- 

 ist attractions, this stately brick 

 monument paid its dues as a sentinel 

 for the state's barrier islands. It has 

 weathered the fiercest hurricanes, the 

 ravages of war and the abuse of 

 men who left it more than once 

 abandoned. It's a curious landmark 

 for seabirds and a place to which 

 catbrier clings. 



Of the fort's decades of history, 



spring. Sea gulls squawked at 

 schooling fish. It was a perfect day at 

 the beach. 



But not so perfect for Col. 

 Moses White, the Confederate offi- 

 cer commanding Fort Macon. He 

 hadn't come to the desolate spit of 

 sand at the tip of Bogue Banks for a 

 vacation. He was sent there to de- 

 fend a fort that some military people 

 considered already obsolete. 



Like other commanders before 



Gen. Robert E. Lee never entered the fort during the Civil War, 

 but he did visit in the 1840s. As a young lieutenant, he came to 

 Bogue Banks to design a system of jetties to help prevent erosion. 



perhaps no period is better known 

 than the Civil War years. "That's 

 why most people come to the fort," 

 says Christy Skojec, a park guide 

 and historical interpreter. "There's 

 just a great deal of interest in the 

 Civil War." 



The climax of that history began 

 at dawn on April 25, 1862. Warm 

 sea breezes signaled the coming of 



him, the colonel saw his service at 

 Fort Macon as less than desirable. 

 The isolation and mundane daily 

 tasks of drill and prepare made duty 

 there an exile of sorts. 



But that's the way the duty had 

 always been. Since the first of its 9.3 

 million bricks was laid in 1826, the 

 fort had been the dropping-off place 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 13 



